


Partially Stars, Mostly Void

by KnightApparent



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin is a Sith Lord but not crispy, Clones without accelerated aging, Echo Lives, F/M, Found Family, Imperial Age, Jesse lives, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:48:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24651094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightApparent/pseuds/KnightApparent
Summary: Echo and Jesse live and serve under the feared Sith Lord Darth Vader. Even though he’s Vader’s right hand man in Palpatine’s Empire, Echo wonders just what’s keeping him going each day.When Commander Cody summons  him to view a promising young cadet, he may have found his answer.Rex is tired, and the fifteen long years since Order 66 have done nothing but solidify those feelings. He still doesn’t know what he wants to do with the rest of his life. He wonders if he’ll ever know, or if the ghosts of the past will haunt him for as long as he lives.
Relationships: CT-21-0408 | Echo & Anakin Skywalker, CT-21-0408 | Echo & CT-5597 | Jesse, CT-21-0408 | Echo & CT-7567 | Rex, CT-21-0408 | Echo/CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555, CT-7567 | Rex & CT-0292 | Vaughn, CT-7567 | Rex/CT-0292 | Vaughn, Stormtrooper Character(s)/Stormtrooper Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Partially Stars, Mostly Void

**Author's Note:**

> I thought to myself: what if Echo and Jesse survived Order 66? What would they do? How would things be different? And I also asked myself: what the hell was Rex doing before he met the crew of Ghost? How did he come to terms with how things ended?
> 
> This is one way it could have happened. I hope you enjoy.

**Imperial Stormtrooper Academy - Kamino**

Living life, for more years than there were stars in the sky, was more trouble than it was worth for many citizens of the galactic neighborhood. People were born, they struggled to adulthood, their childish dreams and hopes and aspirations slowly and relentlessly stripped away bit by bit under the ruling government. It didn’t matter what flag was flown, whether it was Old, High, or defunct Republic with their talks of democracy and order of unknowable and cold hearted Jedi, or the current power, an Empire forged in blood and betrayal. Everything was, generally, the same for the rank and file, the common denizens who struggled to find meaning in each day. The lessons were the same under each: power corrupts, and the only thing worth fighting for was your family.

That’s what Captain Echo of the 501st Legion believed anyway.

Echo was not a man unaccustomed to suffering. His earliest memories were full of it, his young adulthood spent fighting in a war he and millions of his brothers owed their existence to. He was chewed up by it, he and his brothers, branded and marked indelibly, his perfect recall at times tormenting his sleeping hours with the landscapes of battles fought and won or fought and lost, the drenched ground, covered as far as the eye could see with the broken bodies of his brothers, their armor cracked and stained red with blood and mud, always the same in either outcome. The torture he endured, the way those Seperatists dug into his mind and used bonds of love forged in fire and blood, haunted him, his own body a reminder of a betrayal that stung even all the long years after. And above it all, the loss of his one and only, of a vod so close in heart and mind that they may as well have been one. 

No, he was no stranger to suffering. But he couldn’t die. Not yet. Not while there were members of his aliit left to care and fight and die for. 

Which is what brought him back to this place.

Kamino, his homeworld, the place he was decanted, he and millions of other clones. A place he’d never wanted to see again. Too many memories, not just of Fives, his heart and soul, but of all his batchmates. The cadet barracks hadn’t changed so much that he couldn’t visualize him and his brothers when they were kids. The ghosts of Hevy and Cutup were there among the cots, Hevy scolding the other, his hands moving dramatically as he warmed to his topic, Cutup hiding an amused smirk behind his hands. There was Droidbait, the softest of them, wrapping a bandage around Fives’ bicep, features creased with worry even as Fives laughed the injury off with ease. Echo could even see himself, young head resting on Fives’ shoulder, lips moving (probably reciting some reg, he thought with an inward snort) silently. He shook his head, blinking away the image and the burn of tears. 

There was no time for that, no time for specters of the past to dog his steps. He had a job to do, an appointment to keep. Then he could get off this soggy mudball and never look back. 

A door opened with a hiss, and there was the sound of deliberately heavy footsteps to the left of him. Echo turned and was met with the increasingly rare but not exactly welcome sight of another clone. 

“Commander Cody,” he said neutrally, “it’s been a long time.” 

The former Marshall Commander of the 7th Sky Corps looked, in polite terms, like utter shit. His uniform was pressed to perfection and cut over a body that, like many of their brothers now that their fighting days were done and old age beginning to air its toll, was going to seed. There was strength in that body still, like that of a battered predator gearing up for its last weary fight. His boots were regulation shiny, graying hair close cropped. Unlike some of their brothers, Cody had not gone bald. His face was where he’d aged the most, a story of frown lines, mouth caught in a scowl so deeply ingrained he probably held it while he slept, amber eyes devoid of any of the humor and mischievousness he was known for. Those eyes only held frustrated rage and tightly leashed pain. A match to his own in more ways than Echo would like to admit.

“Captain. I appreciate Lord Vader sparing one of his top aides for this.” Cody said, gesturing for Echo to follow as he made his way from the barracks and to the training areas. Echo watched his back as he followed behind. Were Cody’s shoulders so tense because he was following so closely, or had he relaxed at all since he woke? Perhaps it went farther back than that, to his posting here (no secret how much he despised training natborns), or even farther...to Utapau? 

“Of course, Commander. As commanding officer of the 332nd, I’m always on the lookout for promising troopers to better serve the Empire.” He said, the lie passing his lips easily enough. Truth be told he could give two karks about the good of the Empire. He was in it for one thing only: protecting his aliit. If that meant a couple hundred or thousand rebels or force users had to die for him to continue doing so, well the guilt he felt over it had more than enough company in the deep well of his aching heart. 

A rare snort left Cody. Echo’s eyebrow twitched but otherwise he ignored the slight.

“This one isn’t like any other trooper you’ve scooped up. I’ve been saving him just for you. He’s the best I’ve trained, though that isn’t saying much,” Cody said with a disgusted scoff and shake of his head, coming to a halt in the middle of a viewing platform that overlooked a small training square. Despite himself, Echo was intrigued, and as he took his place next to Cody and began to look over the assembled cadets, he couldn’t help but wonder what exactly Cody was trying to do. 

“There: see the one in the corner? The blond one.” Cody said, and when Echo finally spotted the cadet in question, his breath caught in his throat.

“Is that…?” He could hardly get the question out.

“Yes.” Cody said, and if there was a hint of the old man beneath, the one who reveled in a good joke or plan executed perfectly, Echo was too shocked to pay it much heed.

“But how? I thought they...”

“His was the last batch made. They didn’t even accelerate their growth. You’re looking at one of the last Fett clones.” Cody said quietly.

Echo took a closer look at the boy. He was stretching alone on a mat, but in every line of his young body, strength and skill was obvious. His face was carefully blank, and he ignored the sweat that ran out of his close cropped blond hair and into his eyes and now his nose. The Captain wanted to look away but couldn’t, seeing more than an ephemeral ghost that was easily dismissed.

“He’s young.” He said, swallowing heavily, feeling the weight of his limbs and his life pushing down on his shoulders. Cody nodded once, miserable brown eyes lit up strangely as he joined Echo in observing the cadet.

“Fifteen, nearly sixteen standard. More than old enough to fight. He was slotted for the regular army, but these fools don’t have an eye for potential. He’s on officer’s track now. Just needs a commission.” 

Suddenly, the boy looked up, and all at once Echo understood Cody’s strange interest in their young brother. 

“He looks just like Rex,” Echo murmured, briefly allowing himself to bask in the cold, hard knot of rage that sat hard in his stomach before shoving the feeling to the back of his mind. Wouldn’t do to let his anger with Cody, enormous as it already was with decades to fester, get the better of him. Not if he wanted to continue caring for his aliit.

“Yes, he does.” Cody replied, and the longing Echo heard ( _ underserved! _ he inwardly snarled.  _ He didn’t deserve to feel that way, not after what he did _ ) in the Commander’s gruff voice sealed the deal.

“I’ll take him,” he said, abruptly walking away. “I expect him kitted up and ready to leave by the end of the day. Lord Vader sends his regards, Commander.” 

  
  


**Modified AT-TE - Seelos**

Twilight in the desert was beautiful. At least, Rex had always thought so. In the dark of the  _ Resolute _ officer’s barracks, back when he was still a lieutenant and thought wars could be won, he and Vaughn would squeeze into the same bunk and share stories, dreams, and hot, heavy kisses that left his lips bruised and skin tingling for hours after. It was in the vibrant pauses between those kisses, their breathing synced and skin flushed with heat and passion and something entirely unique to them, that they would talk about all they places they’d been and that they hoped to see, what they’d do after the war, where they might settle down together. 

There’d been so much hope then, and even as the war raged on, even as first he and then Vaughn became captains and more and more brothers’ lives were wasted in fruitless, senseless, battles, they held onto that hope, their shared dream of making it and having a little place of their own. 

And then the siege on Mandalore happened, Vaughn killed and left to rot in a sewer like he was nothing, like his life  _ meant nothing _ , and Rex had to continue on as though his heart, his very soul and reason for living, hadn’t been ripped away from him by the crazed machinations of yet another damned force user bent on having their way without regard to the lives it effected. 

Then the war was over, and there was a gulf between him and his vode as wide and as deep as the black hole at the very core of the galaxy. He didn’t even know what happened to Echo or Jesse.

At least he managed to help Ahsoka escape. He had been good for that much at least. Vaughn might have been proud of that. 

Rex sighed and shifted his weight, resting his still muscular forearms on the railing of the deck. Inside the AT-TE he, Wolffe, and Gregor called home, he could hear the familiar sounds of his vode preparing for bed. There was Wolffe puttering around with the kettle, curses and swears unique to the 104th an accompaniment to the clinking of metal and kitchenware. Gregor was in the back, his voice (strangely high since his mind broke) low and soothing, scaling low and high over the melody of an old 212th battle song. A small smile quirked his lips, and he thought of the songs of the 501st. Memories, so vivid he may as well have been there all over again, of Torrent before a battle, their feet stomping against the ground, fists pounding their chest plates, their voices raised in a wild and feral song that shook his bones with its intensity, and there, in the midst of them, his saber a blinding streak of blue lightning in the darkness, Skywalker, face lit, eyes bright with the same fire branded into their dna. In those moments, their jetii was as much a vod as if he’d been decanted and raised to die on Kamino alongside them. 

Those days were long gone, and his jetii was surely dead by now. 

“Rex. Time for bed, vod’ika, so stop wool gathering and get inside.” Wolffe, gruffer now than he was as a commander of legions, said from the open doorway. Despite his melancholy mood, the smile on his face widened, and Rex laughed softly. Leave it to Wolffe to still issue orders like the GAR was on the other side of the horizon waiting for their return. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.” He said, taking one last look at the glittering array of stars just beginning to show their light, before dragging his eyes downward and entering the cozy warmth within.

  
  
  
  



End file.
